‘Where dreams went to die’: Wonka actor reveals chaos behind Glasgow Willy’s Chocolate Experience

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An actor who payed one of many Willy Wonka characters at a failed Charlie and the Chocolate Factory occasion in Glasgow has opened up about coping with police, crying kids and rioting dad and mom, describing the expertise as “where dreams go to die”.

Lured in by the promise of £500, Michael Archibald, 18, turned up to his first ever performing gig anticipating an expert position in a play. Instead he grew to become a part of the Willy Wonka expertise which quicky grew to become infamous after photos of sparse props in an outdated warehouse had been shared on-line.

He described to The Independent the open-plan altering rooms, paltry choices of sweets and meagre decorations, together with an AI-generated poster of a gingerbread home which barely lined a 3rd of the venue’s wall.

One father or mother complained of arriving to discover a “disorganised mini-maze of randomly placed oversized props, a lacklustre candy station that dispersed one jelly bean per child, and a terrifying chrome-masked character that scared many of the kids to tears”.

But days after going viral Mr Archibald and different employees, some whom spent three days organising the so-called “chocolate factory”, say they’re nonetheless ready for his or her first fee from organisers.

He instructed The Independent: “Everything was described as a world of wonders and imagination, an immersive experience.

“But once I walked in to see that everything had still been getting set up, I felt like things were going to take a turn for the worst from then on.

“There was a lot of dancing about with our contracts and mentions of pay felt flimsy.

“I didn’t have time to memorise the scripts for context, as the actors and I had only been given our scripts at 6pm on Friday.”

Did you attend the occasion? If so e mail barney.davis.ind@unbiased.co.uk

He added: “By Saturday I was in absolute tatters.

Arriving at 10am, he found queues of frustrated families waiting 40 minutes over their allotted time slots.

He said: “We were essentially told to scrap our scripts which wasn’t a complete loss as it all had been AI-generated.

“But it was an incredibly huge waste of time.

“I scrapped my role as a Wonka after doing a full run-through in the morning and decided to go around asking some of the parents questions on what was going on, where they had come from; places like Inverness and Dundee?

“My overriding feeling to it all was this is where dreams went to die.”

By lunchtime offended dad and mom making an attempt to get in known as the police, who arrived and quizzed {the teenager}.

He added: “I gave as much info to them as I could. The police took note of what I was saying and said it was good information.

“The man I spoke to took down all of the things I was talking about and said to see whether we’d get paid or not. We clearly haven’t!”

He added: “It was almost comical how everyone started rioting, throwing things about and really kicking up a fuss.”

Willy’s Chocolate Experience organiser Billy Coull apologised for his “vision of the artistic rendition of a well-known book that didn’t come to fruition” and supplied 850 folks their a reimbursement earlier than closing the Glasgow expertise on Saturday.

Mr Archibald hit again: “It’s really interesting to see how they’ve utilised AI so much for script writing and their website and feels like an insult to artists and creative alike, especially considering their budget. It wouldn’t have been that hard to hire some real artists.”

On his future as an actor: “What’s next? Who knows! Hopefully not another Wonkagate though. I hope it doesn’t put other actors off of this for the future, instead it should show that regardless of how terrible the event was, we had some really incredible people trying their best to bring smiles onto the young people’s faces.

“I’d adore to be an actor however I’m not sure how that would end up considering this was supposed to be my first gig. But I’m not worried regardless, since things normally work out well when you’ve got your heart in it.”